Mount Pleasant (30 page)

Never was a mother happier! If only such a story could be forgotten. Njapdunke's belly soon got the silent mouths talking again, giving new life to the winded tales. Her belly began to chatter in those places where all the people had fallen silent. And in the heart of the uncharacteristically quiet spice market it revealed the story that every woman had decided to keep from Lieutenant Prestat. Njapdunke's belly grew. It grew and grew, defying Nebu's mathematics. It grew so much that the women of the city had to hide the future mother. In one of their kitchens, Njapdunke gave birth to a little boy as dark as a shadow, with the sculptor's face—a baby whose first sign of life was a satisfied chuckle.

A man's humiliation can have the dimensions of a suffocatingly small kitchen. It can be as broad as a courtyard. Lieutenant Prestat's humiliation was the size of a sultanate, more gigantic than an
iroko
, a teak tree, in a clearing. It was amplified by the centuries-old baobab in the center of Foumban, which matched the height of his colonial ego. His humiliation was mythic: it had silenced a market full of women but made a newborn burst out in laughter. The child's laughter echoed through all the alleys, streets, and passages, all the houses and bedrooms of Foumban; it came through the history of the old city and woke up the chief omelet maker from his worst nightmare, the face of an infant howling with laughter. It filled him with a burning desire to “kill the son of a bitch who did this to me.”

Or rather, no: “To kill the bitch who made a fool of me.”

After a little more thought, no, better to commit suicide, those vile creatures don't deserve a bullet.

Kill the child?

Kill the son and the mother and silence the nursing baby's guffaws? For silence was the only thing that could bring peace back to the horrified streets, to the horrified world. The women of Foumban were not unaware of Prestat's anger. Terrified by the universe's uncontrollable laughter, they sent the mother and child to a distant exile. Njapdunke left behind her a bit of doubt and mostly a question: Where had she gone? She also left behind an imprudent accusation of rape that she thought would clear her name entirely, but which sent the Man's soldiers flying to Nebu's mother's door, encouraged in their quest for vengeance by a silent and devious informant, Mose Yeyap, who recalled quite clearly the lover's long braids. That's how Lieutenant Prestat arrived in Bertha's courtyard, his body consumed by an unbroken anger, his tin soldiers marching ahead of him.

 

18

The Newborn's Mirth, and So On

Even if the firsthand accounts of this period are lacking in women's voices, what version of events could be closer to the truth than the scar left on Bertha's neck? The report written by Commander Martin, Prestat's superior, then based in Dschang, uses a euphemism to describe the lieutenant's actions. It invokes an “error of judgment.” A recounting of the events as they happened are found only in Njoya's memoirs, the
Saa'ngam
, although it was Martin himself who translated Njoya's book into French. “Two pages were cut out,” he mentions in a note, “undoubtedly because they mentioned living persons still occupying important functions in the country.” He wrote this in 1949, the height of the French colonial reign in Foumban, leaving us thirsting to know who, yes, who culled those pages, so important for our story, from Njoya's book—and especially, what that person was trying to hide.

Here's what we know: the previously mentioned report tries to massage the truth underlying the shame, for it takes Lieutenant Prestat's version of things, exaggerates parts, and then lays out an elaborate theory of colonialism. According to Prestat, the girl—who had been given to him by Njoya upon his arrival in Foumban and whose accomplice he had arrested—was the sultan's secret agent. She had tried to poison him with a dried fish head, having obtained the poison from a palace artist known as Nebu—the sultan's evil hand—whose braided hair marked him, “according to local custom, as a master herbalist.” As soon as Prestat had eaten the poisoned meal served to him by Njapdunke, he had felt his lips burn. He opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue, and his eyes turned red. His breathing grew strained and his heart raced. He was only able to prevent his entire body from exploding because he had the presence of mind to drink a whole barrel full of water.

“Have you ever eaten Bamum cooking?” my friends from Nsimeyong asked; they recognized the description of the aftereffects of a hot, spicy meal.

How right they were!

But Lieutenant Prestat didn't buy it; poison was the only possible explanation. How so? The report continues, quoting many slaves who, when questioned, confirmed that the poisoning cook was following the sultan's orders. Martin didn't note that the aforementioned slaves were brought in by Mose Yeyap, a man motivated by his own ambitions. It's true, the woman Prestat accused had been the slave of the “despot's” mother—as he put it—and she was named after her. Poor Prestat, what a mistake it had been to hire her to work in his house, yes, what an “error of judgment” to have taken in that woman, clearly already “in the employ” of the sultan!

Njoya wanted to kill Prestat, the report went on, because Prestat had been moved by the condition of the lower classes and intended to do something to bring “democracy to the sultanate.” He had opened his ears to the little people, his heart to the Wretched of the Earth, and he had worked to bring about the “emancipation of all the slaves and women in Bamum land.” “Isn't colonialism a good thing?” the lieutenant asked. “Doesn't it represent the opportunity for those who are now last to become first tomorrow?”

Of course, once Nebu was arrested, Prestat had him tied to the baobab, but that wasn't forbidden, and he had done it only in order to extract a confession from him, just as he hoped to extract the truth from the city that kept his secret—so these stubborn people would tell him where he could find the poisoner and, eventually, the name of the man behind it all: Njoya. “Progress and democracy can't be stopped by one man alone,” he insisted.

Nebu came through the ordeal with his teeth clenched. No, he didn't say a word. He didn't cry either. Or call for help. Why would he have called on Njoya? “The native is a child. He understands only one language,” that's how Martin's report concludes. In the darkness of Africa, Lieutenant Prestat did not want to force a young man to cry, but rather to demonstrate France's infinite justice to all, so that no one would ever forget, but always remember.

“Nothing personal,” reads a note added in pen at the bottom of the page.

Who wrote that? Prestat? Martin? How to know? It remains that Lieutenant Prestat was not punished, for “France must not lose face,” as Martin concluded. Prestat left Foumban two years later, having reached retirement age, for “while his intentions were rather good, his heart was too sensitive to the fate of society's most vulnerable classes.”

When the soldiers arrived with their prisoner in the center of town, all of Foumban gathered around them. Old folks, women, men, children, animals: everyone was there. Not just Bertha; all the women from the spice market were up in arms, all the mothers horrified. Oh, everyone was terrified! The
tirailleurs
used their rifles to shove away the hands of the distraught city as they feverishly tied the sculptor to the trunk of the baobab. What Lieutenant Prestat ordered them to do, they did, without delay.

“One!”

“Two!”

“Three!”

“Four!”

“Five!”

The whip rained down on Nebu's back.

“Six!”

“Seven!”

“Eight!”

Who was counting? The spice market. Who was counting? The granaries. Who was counting? The houses. The kitchens. The hundreds of people gathered in the courtyard of their collective humiliation. The hearts of the Bamum who had taken the boy's story as their own. The bellies of all the women who had thought they could keep him hidden. The baobab whose sap had become the young man's blood. Who was counting? The hair that had grown on the sculptor's head for seven years, grown and grown, now braided itself around the tree of misery; his hair reached up and grabbed hold of the tree's branches, hugging the sky, the better to stifle his torment. It is said that Nebu received as many lashes as there are branches on a tree, but who was counting?

“Nine!”

“Ten!”

Yes, who was counting? The flesh of a man, of a son, but especially that of a mother, of all mothers; each mother felt the hippopotamus-tail whip through her belly, cruelly sealing her fallopian tubes. Who was counting? Those men, yes, who felt their blood and their sperm run dry. The weakened loins of everyone there, especially Bertha, who threw herself on her son and was lashed, once, twice, three times on the neck. Who took the blows of a whip so violent it bit into her flesh and tore at her bones before letting go. Who was counting? The old master, Monlipèr, his horror-struck eyes open wide because he had never before seen such a thing, who threw himself in front of the soldiers, covering mother and son with his own body, offering his face to the men with the whips, letting loose with a slew of proverbs and begging them to stop, only to receive his full portion of lashes, too. Who was counting? The whole country was begging the soldiers with the whips, asking them to stop, to stop before it was too late, to stop in the name of God! In the name of the black race!

“This is my son,” Bertha said. “Don't kill him!”

His body was covered in blood.

“My son,” said Monlipèr.

The soldiers were deaf to their tears. The silent approbation of their lieutenant, or at least the nickering of his horse behind them, dictated their actions and encouraged their busy hands to keep going. They knew Lieutenant Prestat would sentence each of them to make up for any lashes they failed to administer. Those soldiers knew that in this country, where they, too, were foreigners, they could count their blessings that they were among those inflicting the pain. That's what you call being on the right side. When Monlipèr threw himself down before their happy hands and grabbed hold of the whip they were using to lacerate Nebu's back, they let him have the final blows meant for Nebu.

“Who do you think you are, old man?”

That's what one of the soldiers said.

“Who?”

“Vermin!”

“Monkey!”

The fourth soldier finished the master artist off. “You are nothing!”

“Yes,” repeated his fellow
tirailleur
, “you're just a burro!”

The word “burro” would have applied to the
tirailleur
if he weren't wearing a uniform and if he didn't have a whip in his hands. Whipping an old man had left him quaking in his bones, but he knew that all the laws around there were worth nothing compared with his tricolored uniform. He had stopped believing in proverbs the day the French colonial administration had given him a rifle. Was it Monlipèr who saved Nebu from death? Or were the vengeful soldiers just tired of making him suffer? What is clear is that different versions of the story were told. The old engineer paid dearly for his courage; when the list of people to deport from the sultanate was set by Lieutenant Prestat's successor, four years after this incident, in 1924, his name was right there.

“Don't you have a mother?”

Monlipèr's question echoed off the pain that had torn open Bertha's neck.

“What kind of people are you?”

His words made Prestat's blood boil, for the lieutenant knew what danger he faced, alone in such a big city, practically a prisoner in the heart of a sultanate, where he understood neither the verbal gestures nor the body language. The old man's questions were echoed in the mood of the gathered crowd, which had fallen silent but struggled to restrain itself.

“What kind of men are you?”

Isn't it surprising that it was Nbgatu and Muluam, the two friends Nebu had met in the old man's workshop, who ran to help their master to free the miserable sculptor from the baobab? No one else had the courage to undo what a colonial officer had done. But they couldn't just leave an unconscious, beaten man to die in the middle of town. What was it that held back the usually quick hands of the Bamum? There were those who remembered that years before the French arrived, even before the English, during the German colonization, the boy's father had hanged himself from the baobab where Nebu now suffered. They talked about fate closing a vicious circle. Thankfully, Nebu's companions had shorter memories. The present, the chaos of the present alone, dictated the logic of their actions.

“He's our
djo
,” they said, meaning, our brother.

Bertha cried out to the heavens; Monlipèr held her son's body. The old master spit blood, cursed the earth. Njoya arrived too late. He had been alerted by a strident rumor echoing across the city and was informed of what happened by his couriers. He had rushed to the site of the crime accompanied by his scandalized entourage, including Nji Mama and Ibrahim. The whole palace had followed, in fact. When he arrived at the foot of the baobab, Prestat and his men had already left. The monarch's horrified face met the wounded eyes of the woman holding her son, unconscious and bloodied, in her arms, cuddling him like a baby. Njoya's ears were filled with the people's grumbling, which grew into shouts that were useless in the face of disaster. This wouldn't be the last time the sultan would come out on the streets of his city without everyone bowing down respectfully, without praise singers lifting up their many voices, without the sky brightening in hopes that his reign would last for a century. The drama that played out that day in Foumban had transformed him into just another inhabitant in his sultanate. Everyone knew that he, Njoya, was the French lieutenant's real target.